A CARPET cleaner turned author is spreading his literary success among the writers of the region.

Conrad Jones is about to publish his seventh novel in less than three years after trading in his day job as a carpet cleaner to beome a crime thriller writer.

And his latest offering Slow Burn is to be released by his publishing company, GerriCon Books, which has now branched out to help other authors from the region like Simon Gould, whose book Playing the Game has just gone on sale.

The 45-year-old said: “I’m keen to keep it with people in the north west, we are getting material all the time. It’s certainly something we are going to expand.

“Simon wrote his book around four years ago and he got an agent in London but with the credit crunch, publishers are not taking a risk so we are.”

Slow Burn is the first book not to feature the characters who started life in January 2008, in the first book Soft Target.

He has written six in the series following the Terrorism Task Force.

Soft Target is currently being adapted for the big screen by a screenwriter who works for Pixar.

“I gave out a lot of copies of Soft Target to the workers at Vodafone and his mother-in-law picked one up. His wife read the book on the plane back to America, handed it to him and he got in touch with me,” added Conrad, from Orford Green.

And as if he was not already busy enough, Conrad has now moved on to writing three biographies with his first, about three-times world kickboxing champion Russ Williams due out in time for Christmas.

He said: “It’s very different writing biographies to novels. I did my first because I was one of Russ’ students for 15 years. A lot of stuff he was talking about I was there. The other two it’s a totally different project because I’m going out talking to people I’ve never met.

“It’s completely different to writing a novel.”

Slow Burn is out at bookshops next Tuesday.